I started a topic about how people became involved with computer programming. The responses were breathtaking. The implications of the responses told me that these people had been programming longer than my whole life on Earth. Some of them said they hooked up with programming since young children or adolescents. The people also used weird things, like punch cards and slide rule. Weird, because I went to middle school with a scientific calculator and a graphing calculator, which also functioned like a little computer. I was never taught how to use slide rule in school, and the high school programming class was all about Java on a computer. No punch cards at all. I wonder if college Computer Science courses would have students punch cards to get a sense of what older programmers had to go through. Is this site mostly populated with older individuals? I sense that many people were born before the 1990s. They began programming in the '80s or even earlier, so they probably lived some years before then, if they started as kids.

Eh? What does sex ("nookie") have to do with programming? :^)

Can you explain what "nookie" means? I see the dictionary definition, but I think it is the wrong definition. It does not seem to fit in this context.

How rich did you expect? The median salary for computer programmers seems to be around middle class.

Reading these posts makes me realize just how old these people really are. The dates are all before I was even born! I am a Millennial, and I played on a computer in 1997-1998. At that time, there was already the Internet, but I didn't use the Internet much, because it hogged the phone line. As a kid, I just thought that the computer was a cool machine to play games on. That computer became a part of my bedroom in middle school and high school in the 2000s, while my family got a new family computer. We are not the most computer-savvy people, but we do have basic computer skills, like using Microsoft Office suite applications to write papers, spreadsheets, and presentations. Dad may program in MATLAB for his scientific research projects, and he taught himself BASIC and JAVA and C++ just because he thought they were cool. Mom is becoming proficient in using applications everyday, but she says she has no interest in programming. It's not relevant to her job anyway. My computer skills are just average. I mean, I just know what a typical non-programming user knows. I worked with HTML and CSS as a teenager to design a static webpage on a virtual petsite, but that didn't last long, because the virtual pet site disabled JavaScript and PHP. I think it's because the virtual petsite was written in JavaScript and PHP, and the webmasters were afraid that users would hack into their computers. So, I moved to FreeWebs and designed little widgets (I think that's what they're called?) with just HTML and CSS. In 2011, I experimented with Excel to create a simple database and then a relational database and then tinkered with Excel macros and the Visual Basic for Applications language. Making the forms was fun, even though none of my college classes required any computer programming skills. This summer is the summer that I would teach myself C++. I hope to use this skill to create an application that will aid in studying. I may publish the software as free, open-source software. I also want to learn web-based programming languages, so that I become more computer-literate and know what it is going on instead of relying on IT people.

How did you get involved in programming? Surely, you must have heard about a computer before somewhere in your lifetime, and then for some reason, you decided to go into programming, either for fun or for profit or both. Also, how did you become aware of the existence of the computer? Did your family have a personal computer when you were little? Were you a mathematician?

I have Dev C++ on my system to practice writing C++ code from my C++ Programming for the Absolute Beginner book. So far, the constant repetition and copying have improved my muscle memory. Then, recently, I just noticed that this application could autocomplete my line. My biggest worry is that this autocomplete thing would make me fail the Computer Science placement exam. I really want to take the placement exam, so then I can get tested into the software development class and skip the introductory CS classes. On the school's website, it says that the placement exam takes place on paper and pencil, so that implies I should know how to write everything down to smallest detail and get it accurate enough so the algorithms would run correctly. Should beginners use Autocomplete? Maybe it's good practice for a beginner to write code on paper and then transfer the code onto the computer?

Um... thanks for the reply. Your profile says you are a retired software support engineer. And then it says you want to be a "real programmer". Um... what does a software support engineer do?

I created this account, because I thought it would be different from the StackExchange. I am familiar with the StackExchange network of sites, but I have never been on the programming sector. The only reason I've gained a high rep on some SE sites is that I actually know or do my own research in academic literature. As a beginner, I didn't feel qualified for participating on the Stack Overflow site, because I might lose a lot of points, so much that I would lose all privileges or something, or ask a non-specific, non-expert-level question. I am very good at mining for relevant information, so that's how I passed as an "expert" and got upvotes. On this site, I was surprised that the set-up was so similar to the StackExchange. It has a preview below the submission form box. It has upvotes and downvotes, and reputation points based on those votes. I asked my first question on this site, and when I returned, I noticed that my question was rated 1/5. I think CodeProject is for people who code, as it says in the subtitle of the logo, not for people who are absolute beginners. I would like to know the expectations of the questions and answers that will get upvotes or 5 stars. Some kind of guideline would be helpful. :)